I love this movie and was thinking about it on a long-ish car ride last weekend. I’ve seen it several times but admittedly haven’t seen it in a while so the following musings might be in error.
But I’m wondering if Jack had the gift of shine. It’s made clear it’s hereditary. And he does seem to be dialed into the spirit of the hotel.
Thoughts?
I just watched Dr Sleep and believe it implied that Danny got the Shine from his moms side of the family.
And in the Shining the hotel dialed into the who family at some point. That and the hotel really didn’t want just Jack. It was just using him to get to Danny.
The book of Doctor Sleep strongly implies a genetic component from Jack’s side. In the book, Danny is literally Abra’s Uncle Danny. Abra’s mother is Danny’s half-sister from an affair Jack had. The movie mentions Momo (the woman with whom Jack had the affair), but that storyline does not appear in the film.
Yes, that’s always been head-canon for me.
Jack had the ‘Shine’ but didn’t know it or know how to control it. The evil in the hotel used his Shine as a ‘battery’ to power all the supernatural events which followed.
Well now I need to read the book Dr Sleep. And rewatch both movies.
In the book, Halloran feels out both Wendy and Jack. For Wendy, he feels a little something, but he thinks it might also just be a mother‘s intuition. For Jack, he senses something, but very deeply hidden, and it makes him uneasy…he’s not sure if it’s the shining or something else.
the implication I had was Jack had the shining but not consciously the way Danny did.
Also as mentioned Jack’s was Abras grandfather.
I always thought that the reason the hotel was able to get to Jack was that there was no one else around to “Drown out” its psychic whispers. When the hotel is full of people, their minds are all “yelling” and no one can hear the hotel without real talent or sensitivity.
Or perhaps Jack drank to tone it down and when he stopped drinking at the hotel it came out.
Danny drank in Dr Sleep to tone it down as well.
I felt something similar. Danny was more open with it as a child. Maybe Jack was too when he was young. Also, Hallorann doesn’t seem to have the darker personality Jack does. I’m sure Jack has learned to hide it by now and could have been protecting himself from Hallorann.
Thats a good point too
Big change there, since Momo (Concetta) is Abra’s great-grandmother in the book, and the mother of Jack’s extramarital fling, which produced Abra’s mother.
Bad wording on my part. In the movie, Momo is mentioned by name strictly as exposition. Abra’s mother says she is going to visit Momo to explain to the audience why she is not present during the scene where the True Knot abducts Abra . The film has no mention at all of the affair or any familial connection between Danny and Abra’s family. And I misremembered Momo being the mom of the fling, not the fling, in the novel.
As far as big changes go, the entire last act in Colorado is completely different between the book and movie. The movie essentially tries to reconcile the vastly different endings of King’s The Shining novel and Kubrick’s film, and resolve the new novel’s True Knot storyline. I thought it did a pretty good job, given the daunting task.
I agree with this…I like the way both the book and the movie ended, different as they were. I also wouldn’t mind seeing or reading one more story in-universe, though sequeling is a little complicated here.